


When One Door Closes

by Starfire (kalypsobean)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Loss of Powers, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 09:11:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4871245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/Starfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments during Steve's loss of powers that Phil Coulson helped him deal with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When One Door Closes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Enk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enk/gifts).



It's been so long since he was sick that he doesn't even realise it when it hits. The first thing he notices is the pain, but he's no stranger to that. He can filter it away by focusing on what has be done, and that's what he does; he looks for Bucky, he lets Tony do all the talking, and, when Phil Coulson turns up, apparently both alive and relatively unharmed, he has emotions there to deal with, ones that he can't quite separate enough to name them all.

With all that's happened, he figures he hides it pretty well when the pain doesn't stop. Of course, it's probably because he keeps getting beaten up, in some sortie or another, because HYDRA never quite go away, and nothing looks as good as Captain America on the front page. Eventually, though, he's accounting for it, rather than expecting it to go away, and he doesn't know when that changed.

 

The first one to notice is Bruce, probably because he was gone and then just came back. Steve thinks Bruce is pulling him aside to explain, and Steve is trying to find words for how to tell Bruce that it's okay, he doesn't have to, but instead Bruce points to an exam chair and tells him to sit.

"I'm going to take some blood, if that's okay with you," Bruce says. "And you can tell me how long this has been going on."

Steve can't put a date on it, not even in reference to a mission. He was tired, then he was sore, then he was here. Bruce starts suggesting times, in days and then weeks. Steve nods somewhere around months.

"You felt like this before?" Bruce says, and the answer hits Steve so hard that he can't tell if it's physical or if he's just imagining being out of breath. "That's a yes, then."

Steve can't take sympathy right now, and Bruce's eyes are soft, like he's about to say something sensitive. He never could, he remembers; he was always fine, even when he couldn't move for the coughing and when another blanket would be perfect, but then someone would have to go without.

"Nobody knows?" Bruce says, instead, after the syringes are labelled and carefully stored in an otherwise empty fridge. "Keep it that way." 

 

Once he's away from Bruce's lab, though his rooms are no less sterile and carefully impersonal, it occurs to Steve that Bruce might be the only one who could understand. It was the serum for him, too, and it's a part of his identity in the same way it is for Steve; their whole lives lived around what their bodies made of them. However, Steve was glad to be away from Bruce, from the carefully worded questions and the concealed concern, and from feeling like a monkey in a cage. He could go back down to the lab, sit there and watch Bruce do whatever tests he's planning, but it would be quiet, it would be bright, and Bruce might ask him something else he can't answer.

 

He has a Band-Aid on his arm, because it wouldn't stop bleeding when Bruce took the needle out, and it hasn't healed. The whole area is tender, and he keeps bumping it, because he can't see properly. There's blurring around the edges of the lights, so he turns them off, and suddenly he's in less pain, except from where he walks into a chair on his way to the bedroom. Lying down is almost a relief, but once he's there he realises there's nothing to do, because all that is back in the living area, and he's kept the bedroom for sleeping.

He does have a phone, though, because otherwise it would be FRIDAY waking him up for an emergency, and he can't get used to it the same way he accepted JARVIS. Tony had found him one with text to speech as a joke, but it means Steve can ring someone else who may understand without having to turn on a light, and he will never tell Tony how grateful he is.

Phil answers on the fourth ring. "I'm kinda busy right now," he says. "But I still need you to sign those trading cards. I got a blood-free set from eBay."

"I think I'm sick," Steve says. "Bruce did tests."

"I'm coming," Phil says. Just like that, Steve forgives him for being dead.

 

~*~

 

Phil shows up two days later, when Steve is in the shower wishing that the hot water was helping. "Can I use your kitchen?" he calls through the door. Steve's answer is a wracking cough that has him leaning on the wall until he's sure that it's stopped. 

Reflexively, he checks in his hand for blood, but there is none.

 

The expression on Phil's face doesn't change at all when Steve slides onto a kitchen stool. He has to notice; he's been physically absent longer than Bruce, so he wouldn't be exposure-blind to the weight loss and chalky pale skin that reminds Steve of snow every time he sees himself in a mirror. Steve's wearing the oldest T-shirt he owns and sweatpants, because he looked in his wardrobe and decided he couldn't face buttons. It's not that his hands shake, but that he can't feel them, sometimes, and he would rather face Phil while wearing clothes than have Phil find him struggling to do up his jeans.

He's fairly sure it wouldn't actually faze Phil, but Steve, in one of his many escaping, half-formed thoughts, doesn't want Phil to see him like that - he's always been strong for Phil, always been Captain America.

"It doesn't define you, you know," Phil says. Steve looks up, sees Phil standing over the stove with a wooden spoon half-raised out of a saucepan and a mitt on the other hand, and looks back down. "The suit, I mean." 

This is the first time Steve has seen Phil not in a suit, and he's a bit distracted, because the images don't match in his head. Phil doesn't push it, though; he doesn't speak again until Steve notices he's spooning from the saucepan to bowls. Steve stands, so that he can set the table, and he stumbles. "I got it," Phil says. He does everything; he carries the bowls to the table, opens the wine that Steve definitely did not buy, he leans around Steve to get forks from the drawer, and he puts water and detergent in the saucepan.

Steve has to hold himself up on the counter as he walks from the stool to the table, and Phil watches him.

The quiet is reassuring; it's not soundless, because he can hear Phil breathing, Phil's fork on the bowl, the glass echoing off the table every time Phil puts it down. There's no running conversation that he has to pay attention to, but he isn't alone.

It's nice, until FRIDAY announces that Dr Banner is on his way up and had requested Steve be told it's important. Steve doesn't ask for Phil to stay; Phil doesn't move, or show any sign that he had heard, except for refilling Steve's glass of wine. 

Steve feels a bit tipsy, and he's not sure that's a great idea, but he isn't sure he wants to be sober if it's something Bruce decided can't even wait five minutes.

 

"Would you like some carbonara, Dr Banner?" Phil says. "I made it myself."

"No, thank you," Bruce says. The _suit yourself_ hangs in the air, unsaid, though Steve can feel it, almost, from the way Phil's shoulders tense. He can tell what Phil meant to do; but Bruce isn't that kind of doctor, as he's so fond of saying, and missed the cue. Steve puts the fork down - the carbonara is that good, he'd rather reheat it than let it go to waste if the news is half as bad as Bruce's behaviour indicates - and waits.

He's grateful for the wine, and for Phil, who asks all the questions he would if he could think through the fog and immediate feeling of his head being so full it might burst. 

"You're still you," Phil says, when Bruce is gone and Steve's another pint of blood down. "Nothing can change that."

Steve wants to say that it has, but his brain won't tell his mouth what to do. Phil eventually takes the pasta away, and then the wine, and Steve sits, staring into nothing, and listens to Phil washing the dishes by hand. 

 

~*~

 

Telling the team is both worse and better than finding out for himself. 

"That's a bit fast, isn't it?" Sam says, when Bruce said he ran the tests twice to be sure.

"Tony didn't cannibalise my lab," Bruce says. "It still works." 

This time the questions are about how long he can stay in the field and whether he can still command, which are the ones Steve wasn't prepared for, and the ones Phil didn't ask. He's there, off to the side, where Steve can see him, but he's not a part of the conversation. Steve finds himself glancing over, often enough to know that Phil is taking calls on his Bluetooth and that most of them revolve around his calendar.

"What you're saying is, Capsicle's age is catching up with him," Tony says. He moves forward, tilts his head, and Steve can almost feel Tony's eyes measuring him, analytically. The gaze is sharp, and almost cold, though Steve hopes he's imagining that.

"In short," Bruce says. "Steve's augmented DNA is increasingly failing to be expressed in a process similar to normal ageing."

"Someone should have known about this." Tony says. Bruce is backing away just as quickly as Tony is moving in, and Steve has a fleeting mental picture of a sandwich. "Did someone know about this?" Tony produces a syringe from somewhere and pokes in Steve's other arm, the one that's not bruised, and Steve flinches.

"Let him," Phil says, suddenly there, his hand low on Steve's back and his face so close to Steve's neck that he can feel the air as Phil talks. "It's his way of coping. And then you'll know for sure."

Phil's the one who presses on Steve's arm when Tony takes the needle out and wanders off, muttering words Steve couldn't hope to remember or pronounce. "That's enough," Phil says. "When we know more, you will. Until then, it's business as usual. Natasha," he says, and nods at her. She leads the team away, though Sam hesitates, until Steve somehow, manages a weak smile. He can feel his mouth making the shape, and see Sam relax, but he doesn't feel like it matches what he really feels.

"The fatigue will pass," Phil said. "Bruce said the changes are likely to slow down as your metabolism decreases." 

Another thing Steve has to thank Phil for, when his mind can catch up with the rest of the world, is not saying things will be okay.

 

~*~

 

Phil has set up an office in the corner of Steve's living room and a bed in the room Steve used to use for working out when the press made it difficult to leave the Tower. When Steve feels awake enough, he sits on the couch, a blanket or two pulled up over his chest, and watches. He's not sure where all the stuff came from; as far as he could tell, Phil only brought a suitcase, a small cube, and a duffel bag. 

The one time Steve tries to help, Phil pushes him back down on the couch and puts a laptop on top of the blankets. "Catch up on some culture," Phil says. "You can tell me what's happening in the real world when our one lets us have a break."

The laptop screen ends up with a crack in it after a particularly violent coughing fit, but the next day Phil hands him another one without any hint of frustration. 

 

Steve grows used to the routine; somehow, though Phil doesn't talk about work, he senses that Phil's grown to prefer it to field work. He still spends part of every moment wishing it were different; every time he has a chill or he coughs or Bruce or Tony have some kind of new test or treatment or he shifts and a shooting pain radiates from one place to another, he wonders what he would be doing if he was fine.

He tells himself it could be worse; he could be alone.

It helps, until the next time.

**Author's Note:**

> This could potentially be a series, since this felt like it wanted to be longer but Steve wasn't quite past the wallowing/withdrawal stage, and I felt like explaining things about this universe would distract from the "Phil and Steve talking about everything but why Phil dropped everything to Steve-sit" show.


End file.
